Can AI teach you how-to-dance? Part 1

TWENTY YEAR DANCE MILESTONE
Yes, AI will take my job as a dance instructor…

I have the type of personality that is drawn to ‘shiny objects’. I am a dancer with an entrepreneurs heart, thus I am always in search for new adventures, and love ‘new shiny things’.  The shiny objects I am mostly drawn too are the new ways of running my business. Side note, I also like reading history. 

I was introduced to ai chatter from a Lex Fridman podcast interview with Andrej Karpathy [ podcast #333].  It tugged at me even though the content shared was way over my head, so I watched another video [Lex interview of Wojciech Zaremba, podcast #215], and it was still way above my paygrade. In December 2022, the ‘ai head’ popped up again on my radar from the Joe Rogan podcast, followed by this podcast of these rich dudes podcast [All In Podcast], and by January 2023, I was hooked!

I have listened to hundreds of hours of You Tube videos absorbing what my little brain can absorb after spending time with my young family, and managing a business/community as it approaches a milestone year.  Like the entrepreneur I am, I looked at the many different business opportunities this new technology presented.  I also explored the darker side of ai, how it would affect our society.  

I have come to think of ai as a tool, and with the right understanding on how to use it, one can enhance their work. For me, this meant removing myself from all the marketing tasks, lead-generating tasks, customer support tasks, onboarding tasks, and administration tasks that needed to competed before I could finally get a chance to hang out and dance with my dance friends.  Did I mention that I am a terrible speller? 

As 2023 morphed into 2024, I became comfortable with the idea that as an instructor, ai may not replace me - the human element - in what I do.  As a dance instructor, some of my responsibilities revolve around community building, mentorship, event organizer, and of course, teaching dance.  Pretty hard to replace with AI. It gave me some ease, but the feeling did not last long.  I watched this You Tube video “OpenAI Speech-to-Speech Reasoning” of a robot, running on Chatgtp 4 software, having a conversation in the kitchen (one of my favourite rooms in the house).  I knew immediatley that I too can be replaced.  So, what do I do?  

I continued listening to the darker side of ai, this video shared that there is about a 15% to 20% chance that ai will the end of of humanity in 5-10 years.  That, in my mind, is a big percentage point, and in a short time-period - kinda scary.  So, what does one do?

For me, being part of a community has always been an important element in my life.  I grew up with 3 siblings, and lots and lots of cousins. My teen years were spent in boarding school and that experience either makes or breaks you [the African experience of boarding school is very very different from the western one, trust me on that one].  

Those communities played a part in molding me into the person I am today.  There are experiences I would like to share, my stories.  And with the odds being a 15% to 20% chance that ai will be the end of humanity in 5-10 years, I am going to focus more time on the things that enhance my life every day, my family and community.  I will use ai as a tool to help me automate 50% of my work, giving me more time to enjoy the things I love doing most.

So, how does one tell their story? And why do I want to tell my story? Vanity? Ego? Who would be interested in me? As I write this, many images flash through my thoughts, at times pausing and let my thoughts wander [funny].  So again, why do I want to tell my story? Because I can.  And because of my kids.  

The basic purpose of life, of my life is to reproduce and pass on the knowledge I have learned to the next generation, my kiddos (I learned that by reading/listening to Yuval Noah Harari, an world historian). This thought pattern first came to me as Jen (my partner) & I were driving to TO to dance socially.  I am a few years older than her, and part of our regular conversations at that time were about us having kids. I had given up on having kids - the right person had not found me, and dating an entrepreneur can be challenging.  The dance community was my world, and I was content.  Jen wanted to have kids with me, and since I was not sure about having them, we could look into freezing my sperm - she wanted it at my prime age, lol.  

For the next hour driving together, we had a deep discussion on why we would want to have kids.  It’s purpose, the pros and cons, what each of us would be giving up, what would we be gaining, why would we, why would I want some bring another human into this life of challenges, of the wins and losses in life, of joyous moments and heart breaks. As I looked back at my life, the road I had taken to get where I was at that moment, I observed a unique path, with lots of bumps, zig zags and pot holes, but a path none-the-less that had lead me to where I was.  My experiences had shaped me into an interesting person, a very interesting person [my ego is talking here - I think I have a healthy one, lol]. 

So I came back to the original question, who would be interested in my story? My kids. I have a daughter with a disability, and as she grows up, I would like her to know how I became me on her own time.  I have a younger son who absorbs everything at the moment, I love watching him and reliving my childhood through him. I had an amazing childhood in another country that shaped me into the person I am today. I would like to share those stories with both my kids, fulfilling my purpose in this life, to reproduce and pass on what I have learned in this life.  

Looking back on my life, and wondering how I would begin telling these stories.  I decided to break up my life into different stages, each stage a transition into different person who is presented with different adventures and challenges along the way.  I will call these stages lives, the different people I became to fit the role I played at that moment in my life. Most of my public stories will be between my 4th and 6th lives, how I fumbled into the life of dance, and how a Kenyan man came to be teaching Salsa in a ‘smallish’ town in Canada. 

The 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th Lives Of Nico

1st life: 0-19 yrs | Kenya 
* 1972 to 1991
* childhood / under my parents roof

2nd life: 19-28 yrs | Intro to Canada
* 1991 to 2000
* student / alien / odd jobs / black hole

3rd life: 29-33 yrs | slave 
* 2000 to 2004

4th life: 34-39 yrs | FDComm 1.0
* 2004 to 2010
* quit job / pets on the move / teach dance / own studio part 1 (learning to teach)

5th life: 40-50 yrs | FDComm 2.0
*2010-2020
* homeless / 1st vacation / family / online 1.0 (amazon) / studio part 2 (developed a system & dance school)

6th life: 51-??? yrs | FDComm 3.0 
* 2021 to ???
* family / online 2.0 (flyingaisolutions) / studio/fdfest part 3 (testing and implementing system)

Try this out as an experiment for yourself. Sit, take a deep break, pause, then look back at your life.  Break it down into different stages of your own choosing, observe the period, reflect, and maybe, learn from your lifes journey so far.  The most important part, start creating, writing the next stories that matter to you!  Cheers!

Part 2 next week…..

GROUP DANCE LESSONS
In April-May ‘24

• West Coast Swing Dancing starting on Monday, April 22nd.
- 8-week session from April 22nd to June 17th, skipping May 20th (Victoria day in Ontario).

• Salsa Dance Session starts Tuesday, April 30th.
- 8-week session from April 22nd to June 18th

DANCE-VENTURES with FDComm
Where Can I Dance Tonight?

• Tomorrow night, Friday, April 19th: Friday Night Salsa Fix (FNSF) Theme Night: Masquerade Ball in Guelph

• Saturday, April 20th: Guelph West Coast Swing SPRING FEVER Party in Guelph

DANCE-VENTURES in the community
Where Can I Dance Tonight?

• Saturday, April 20th: - Kizo Love Kizomba Dance Social | Guelph, On
• Saturday, April 20th: - Salsa Night Dancing | London, On
• Sunday, April 21st: The Sunday Mid-Day Fix | Waterloo, On

Next Week
• Wednesdays: 𝗗𝗧𝗞 Wednesdays Salsa Bachata Zouk Kiz

DANCE-VENTURES
Where Can I Dance This Summer?

The FDFest 2024 Early-Bird Tickets are available for the next few weeks: from Friday, March 22nd to Monday, April 22nd. Here are the few confirmed artists for 2024.